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Preston, Diane (2013). Being a manager in an English nursery. European Early Childhood Education ResearchJournal, 21(3) pp. 326–338.

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EUROPEAN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION RESEARCH JOURNAL

Being a Manager in the English Early Years sector

Dr Diane Preston, Business School, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Abstract

This article draws on interviews with 29 managers and deputy managers within 15

nurseries in the private sector in England. The author argues that, whilst there is a

growing literature on management and professionalism within the Early Years (EY)

sector, there is less known about the actual experiences of being a manager in this

context. Many of the individuals who are promoted into a management role did not, until

recently, have the training to support them. Whilst individuals are being encouraged to

participate in the managerial roles now demanded by the professionalisation agenda, it

could be argued that the traditional EY workforce are primarily motivated by a strong

desire to work with children. Even if their own employer provides in-house management

training or the opportunity to participate in national schemes such as EYPS, these young

women, like many professionals becoming managers, move away from what they like

doing best – working with the client/children. The research outlined in this paper explores

these issues by relaying individuals’ stories of what it is like to be a manager in the EY

context.

KEY WORDS: Early Years, management, manager, training, development

Résumé

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Cet article dessine sur les entretiens avec 29 directeurs et les directeurs adjoints dans 15

garderies dans le secteur privé en Angleterre. L'auteur se dispute cela, pendant qu'il y a

une littérature croissante sur la direction et le professionalisme dans les Premiers Ans

(EY) le secteur, il y a moins connu des véritables expériences d'être un directeur dans ce

contexte. Beaucoup des individus qui sont promus dans un rôle de direction n'ont pas fait,

jusqu' à récemment, avoir l'entraînement pour les soutenir. Pendant que les individus sont

encouragés à participer dans les rôles directoriaux maintenant exigé par le programme de

professionnalisation, on pourrait soutenir que la main-d'oeuvre d'EY traditionnelle est

principalement motivée par un fort désir de travailler avec les enfants. Même si leur

propre employeur fournit l'entraînement de direction sur place ou l'occasion de participer

dans les arrangements nationaux comme EYPS, ces jeunes femmes, comme beaucoup de

gens de métier qui deviennent des directeurs, s'éloignez de qu'ils aiment faisant meilleur

– travaillant avec les client/enfants. La recherche esquissée dans ce papier explore ces

problèmes par relaying les histoires des individus de ce que c'est comme être directeur

dans le contexte d'EY.

Abriss

Dieser Artikel greift auf Interviews mit 29 Managern und stellvertretenden Managern

innerhalb 15 Kinderstuben im privaten Sektor in England zurück. Der Autor argumentiert

das, während es eine wachsende Literatur auf Leitung und Professionalität innerhalb den

Frühen Jahren (EY) Sektor gibt, gibt es weniger bekannt um die eigentlichen

Erfahrungen, ein Manager in diesem Kontext zu sein. Viele der Individuen, die in eine

Leitungsrolle gefördert sind, nicht bis kürzlich, hat die zu Ausbildung machten, sie

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unterstützen. Während Individuen ermutigt werden, sich an den leitenden Rollen jetzt hat

verlangt durch die professionalisation Tagesordnung zu beteiligen, könnte es

argumentiert werden, dass der traditionell EY Arbeitskraft hauptsächlich von einem

starken Wunsch angeregt werden, mit Kindern zu arbeiten. Selbst wenn ihr eigener

Arbeitgeber innerbetriebliches Management-Training oder die Gelegenheit versorgt, sich

an nationalen Schemata zu beteiligen, wie zum Beispiel EYPS, diese jungen Frauen, wie

viele Fachleute, die Manager werden, weg bewegt, von was sie mögen, machend best –

arbeitend mit dem Kunden/Kindern. Die Forschung, die in diesem Papier skizziert wird,

erforscht diese Ausgaben durch Übertragen die Geschichten von Individuen, wovon es

ist, sein mögen ein Manager im EY Kontext.

Sumario

Este artículo utiliza entrevistas con 29 directores y subdirectores dentro de 15 guarderías

infantiles en el sector privado en Inglaterra. El autor discute eso, mientras hay una

literatura creciente en la gestión y el profesionalismo dentro de los Años Tempranos (EY)

sector, hay menos supo de las experiencias verdaderas de ser a un director en este

contexto. Muchos de los individuos que son promovidos en un papel de gestión no

hicieron, hasta recientemente, tiene la instrucción para apoyarlos. Mientras individuos

sean favorecidos a tomar parte en los papeles directivos ahora demandado por el orden

del día de la profesionalización, podría ser discutido que la plantilla tradicional de EY es

motivada principalmente por un deseo fuerte para trabajar con niños. Incluso si su propio

empleador proporcione la instrucción interna de gestión o la oportunidad de tomar parte

en esquemas nacionales como EYPS, estas jóvenes mujeres, como muchos profesionales

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que llegan a ser directores, se marchan de lo que quieren hacer mejor – trabajando con los

cliente/niños. La investigación resumida en este papel explora estos asuntos

retransmitiendo las historias de individuos de lo que es quiere ser un director en el

contexto de EY.

------------------------------------------------

Being a Manager in the English Early Years sector

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to add to the growing literature about the changes that have been

taking place in the Early Years (EY) sector within England within the past decade. It will

be argued that the traditional images of the EY sector and profile of the EY workforce

may mitigate the introduction of managerialism. The introduction of rational

management concepts into an emotive, caring context presents a challenge in a sector

where: “the research shows that childcare work is seen as intrinsically a woman’s

job…draw[ing] on attributes that women see themselves as possessing rather than

requiring the acquisition of new skills and professional competencies.” (Penn 2000:128).

In short, taking on a management role may be difficult in a context permeated with self

and public images of the job being largely un-professional and something anyone

(woman) could do. The introduction of the EYPS qualification has been significant in the

professionalism agenda but insistence upon professional qualifications may exclude or

deter many individuals who are, or would make, excellent carers. Moreover, many EY

employees will not have aspirations to move into management positions as this may take

them away from their caring roles. Yet, because of the growth of the EY sector, in many

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cases young female nursery employees are being asked to take on managerial roles and to

be, in effect, the managers of small businesses, responsible for making a profit as well as

ensuring the satisfaction of numerous stakeholders. In this context, it seems vital that

there are adequate induction, training and development systems in place for them to be

able to deal with this difficult role.

The focus of this paper is on a particular part of the EY sector – the private nursery. Until

the current recession, this was one of the fastest growing areas of small business growth.

Many private nurseries in the UK have become highly profitable small businesses which

require conformity to exacting legal and quality standards and the concerns of multiple

stakeholders. The provision of customer satisfaction is vital with a clientele (parents)

increasingly demanding both professionalism and an environment of caring and trust.

Urban describes the EY context thus: “the dilemma unfolds between the day-to day

experience of having to act concretely, spontaneously and autonomously in ever-

changing, uncertain situations which, to a large extent, are determined by factors beyond

the practitioners control, and the pressure that arises from increasing socio-cultural and

socio-economic expectations to produce predetermined outcomes in this complex work

context” (2008:136). Nursery managers are often responsible for attracting new business,

meeting financial targets and managing budgets and paperwork. People management

skills are also paramount in a sector where attracting and keeping staff is a major

problem.

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The aim of this study is to report the experiences of a group of nursery managers and

deputy managers with the aim of providing some insight into how they cope with being

placed into a manager role. In most sectors, studies which describe the personal

experience of managing or ‘being manager’ (Parker 2004) are relatively sparse. However,

it is important that we recognise the potential difficulties for individuals in both

understanding and utilising the numerous management concepts on offer. In the caring

professions, individuals have often entered that profession because of a particular set of

values and a desire to work directly with people. Taking on a management position – and

persona - may be very different to the values and personal interests that originally

motivated them to pursue that career.

Changes in the Early Years sector

Over the past decade, many countries have set ambitious policy goals to increase both the

quantity and quality of EY provision. The relentless expansion of this sector has been

mirrored across many countries, with differing solutions as to how this might be funded

and promoted at national level (see, for example, Oberhuemer and Ulich 1997). Over a

decade ago, Drury et al flagged that “this is an exciting time to be involved in the field of

early years care and education. The needs of children under five are now firmly on the

political agenda.” (2000:1)

The provision of child care for working parents has been promoted as having important

implications for the social and economic success of the UK. The UK is further ahead than

most, introducing several major initiatives in the EY sector in recent years and reflecting

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the huge growth in demand based on changing patterns of employment amongst parents

with pre-school age children. Christopherson suggested that, ‘in all cases, women’s

changing employment patterns within the broader labour market are at the heart of the

incentives and capacities re-shaping caring services’ (1997:12). In the UK, the number

of working women with a child under five doubled between 1984 and 2000 (27% to

54%) (Cameron et al 2002). And in the second quarter of 2008, more than two thirds of

working-age women with dependent children (68 %) were in employment and 57% of

those had children aged under 5 (Labour Force Survey, Q2 2008, Office for National

Statistics). This socio-economic shift has led to an ever-increasing demand for quality

child care and extra-ordinary growth in this business area.

The government in England has sought to push 'a transformational reform agenda

designed to improve life chances for all and reduce inequalities in our society' (DfES

2006). This has involved a plethora of well-publicised initiatives such as Sure Start

Childrens Centres. These reforms are intended to meet growing demands from parents

but also to integrate EY services and professionalise the workforce. The main purpose of

the Children's Workforce Development Council established in 2005, for example, was the

strengthening of EY workforce through the creation of new qualifications, roles, training

opportunities and career development and pathways to raise the quality and status of the

EY workforce. A key CWDC initiative has been the development of a new Early Years

Professional (EYP) role. The EYP role is intended to achieve graduate leadership across

the EY services in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector. There has also

been the introduction of the Senior Practitioner created in 2001 (DfES 2001) and the

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launching of the NPQICL ((National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre

Leadership) in 2009. Despite these developments, in the English context, notes Miller

‘the diverse roles and responsibilities of early years practitioners, the variety of settings

they work in, and the lack of a professional registration body and formal pay structures

make it difficult to agree what constitutes an early years professional’ (2008:266).

Whilst the importance of the EY agenda at national level has been welcomed, the speed

of change and the new roles and qualifications introduced have been met with concern by

some commentators. Moss, for example, welcomes the attention being given to the EY

sector but, in terms of new qualifications, the “… training of childhood workers and the

structuring of the workforce itself cannot be divorced from fundamental questions about

early childhood services … country …institutions and how we conceptualise the early

childhood worker.” (2000:106). Both of the new Senior Practitioner and EYP roles were,

suggests Miller (2008), implemented within relatively short timescales with little time for

consultation and reflection. Whilst professionalisation is welcomed within the sector,

there is a fear that it is being done to rather than in consultation with the EY sector.

Osgood (2006) suggests that the regulatory approach of the reforms are intended as a

means to control both what is happening within the EY sector and the EY workforce.

Simpson (2010) also noted that that a key perspective in the EY professionalisation

debate is that of social constructivism; that is, that government reforms are an attempt to

impose a particular view and method. This runs contradictory to what Osgood (2006:8)

terms the “essential counter discourse of emotionality” – a key part of working with EY

children.

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Within this wider debate, it is the introduction of management and business models into

the EY sector which is the focus of this paper. More specifically, the personal

experiences of young women in the EY sector who, in the case study organisation, had

been chosen to take on the position of manager or deputy manager. Firstly, we explore

further how the concepts of managerialism could be argued to sit uncomfortably within

the EY context.

Management concepts within the Early Years sector

Some research (for example, Rodd 1996, Oberhuemer 2005) in the EY sector has drawn

attention to the increasing expansion and complexity of roles; including those ‘at the top’.

Indeed, the findings of an international leadership project highlighted the 'urgent need to

review the ways in which professionals conceptualise leadership in early childhood'

(Ebbeck and Waniganayake 2003). But working with young children has long been

viewed as a non-professional vocation. Women are still viewed as being the main carer

for young children and arrangements for child care are often run on an informal basis

through relatives or friends. Cameron et al (2001) describe the dominant understandings

of EY work as being associated primarily with mothering, not necessarily requiring any

type of qualification. Traditionally, the EY workforce in England has relatively low

levels of education and the variety of qualifications and the type and level of training

required is confusing, ranging from the totally unqualified to graduate and postgraduate

qualifications (Miller 2008). In 2005, just 12% were qualified to level 4 or above

(postgraduate level) (DfES 2005). Indeed, girls leaving school who “express an interest in

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working with children are likely to be steered towards teaching if academic attainment is

good enough; towards a childcare career if it is not. Unqualified women returning to

work are often steered towards it too because is building on something they can already

do, look after children.” (Penn 2000:116). EY work is still poorly paid and poor rates of

pay tend to affect how work is valued in society. Despite this, child care workers have

been found to one of the occupational groups expressing most satisfaction with their jobs

(Rose 1999). This intrinsic motivation may represent another factor deterring childcare

workers from seeking professional qualifications and wanting to move into a

management position. Experience and a ‘way with children’ are often valued by both

carers and parents as being more important than formal training. A tension arises, then,

from the dichotomy between a workforce that is construed as caring, maternal and

gendered, as opposed to professional, degree educated and highly trained. It echoes

Osgood’s (2006) concerns about professional autonomy as management concepts such as

bureaucracy, accountability and performativity sit uneasily in a caring and emotive

environment.

Management in the Early Years sector

Management may have been recognised as an important aspect of the progression of the

child care field by some (Rodd 1997, Smith and Langston 2000, Moyles and Yates 2004)

but there was, until recently, little provision of management training for those moving

into a management position. Some studies have shown how the quality of programmes

and services for young children and their families is related to effective leadership by

those in management positions (Rodd 1994, Stipek and Ogana 2000, Muijs et al. 2004)

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but studies in this area remain few. Similarly, the concept of leadership in early childhood

“remains weakly theorised, and resources to support and inform a distinctive early

childhood leadership culture are sparse” (Woodrow and Busch 2008:83) .Generic

management skills are offered but with little reference and understanding of this

particular work environment. Kagan (1994), for example, has suggested that traditional

approaches to understanding leadership ignore two central features of the child care

context. Firstly, the multiplicity of stakeholders in child care (parents, children, schools,

authorise, etc.) means that organisational strategies and processes in this sector require

higher levels of flexibility and individualisation. Secondly, women tend to prefer and

utilise shared leadership models, promoting an ethos of collaboration and collective

success for all. In at least one study of female EY practitioners, talking to each other and

sharing thoughts and feelings were thought to be key factors of the work (Moyles and

Suschitzy 1997). These stereotypical images are strong and, as Moyles points out, those

who work in caring roles could not be blamed for feeling that ‘they are regularly

criticised for ... inclining ...towards ‘non-professional’ and ‘woolly’ thinking.” This,

despite the fact that a “key skill in child care is the ability to handle a range of events, and

sometimes potential crises, in a clear headed and rational way” (2001:86).

Case Study

The case study organisation was a group of private nurseries in the UK that, at the time of

study, had 25 nurseries and was in the process of opening more (in 2011, now 36).

Several of the nurseries were new or were newly acquired and the average time in post

for both managers and deputy managers was two and a half years. The senior Comment [DP1]: Re. information about number of managers and deputies and how long in post

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management team within the organisation liked to monitor closely what was happening in

the nurseries, monitoring performance through strict deadlines and targets and often

making visits. Competition was encouraged between the different nurseries through

mechanisms such as sports competitions and employee awards but there were also regular

social events such as an annual Ball for all levels of employee. The level of training was

relatively high and staff development was encouraged including, at the time of study, the

start of an internal management development programme for a few selected individuals.

Managers and staff were offered places in the nurseries for their own children at

subsidised rates, a share and pension scheme had just been introduced and, senior

management told us, both salaries and retention rates were higher than the national

average.

Method

11 nursery managers and 17 deputy managers (4 of whom were acting managers at the

time of study) across 15 nurseries were interviewed during a 3 month period. The

interviews, each approximately an hour long, were semi-structured and used to capture

in-depth accounts of how these individuals with new managerial roles had experienced

this transition. Interviewees were told that this was a project sponsored by the MD but

that all data was anonymous and confidential. It was emphasised to them that, although

the interview had some structure in terms of its content, they were welcome to volunteer

additional information should they feel it was relevant to the overall aims of the session

(Marginson1996). All the participants agreed to have the sessions tape-recorded and the

tapes were transcribed verbatim. The research was framed within a social constructivist

Comment [DP2]: This section is slightly reworded to make it sound less ‘corporate’

Comment [DP3]: Information about number of managers and deputies

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paradigm with the aim of understanding individuals as “active participants in the

restructuring process and analyse the ways that individuals challenge, shape and resist the

changes that are affecting them” (Thomas and Linstead 2002: 376). The qualitative

approach was utilised to elicit the type of deeply textured data which is often lost when

using extracted quantitative measures. Using a semi-structured interview, the intention

was to produce a holistic view of what it is like to take on the role of a nursery manager

as a EY practitioner; to understand more about what it is like to be a manager in the EY

nursery sector, what the interviewees thought were the main issues for EY managers

generally and how the job of a manager differed from that of a nursery nurse. The data

was then subjected to qualitative content analysis, focussing on narratives and narrative

trajectories in the form of thematic review (Morphew and Hartley 2007, Price 2010).

Findings

Being a manager

One predominant theme in the interviews was just how hard it was being a manager in

terms of the amount of work to be done and the over-riding sense of responsibility. Most

individuals said that they had to work long hours to perform all aspects of the job, often

staying late and putting extra time in to cover for colleagues. One individual explained

how:

You have a big responsibility with the children but also as a manager. As compared with

five years ago, we are very much like business managers. Although you’re part of a

company you are very much running a little business. If you don’t do well it affects

everything.

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This highlights the ‘performativity’ culture of the case study organisation. If paperwork

and monthly budgets were submitted late, they were quickly chased by Head Office and

if targets or profits were down, the nursery manager was asked why. Visits by the senior

management team were seen as helpful and ‘friendly’ but also having a sense of purpose

– to check up on what was happening. Interviewees talked about the worry of ‘getting it

right’, of only having been ‘shown once’ and that they didn’t want to ‘look stupid’ by

telephoning head office to talk through how to compile the monthly accounts. Some of

this could be put down to inexperience on the part of the nursery managers and deputies

and they often coped with this by calling other nursery managers that they knew for help

in this and other matters. Bu the weight of responsibility and the idea that the role was

perhaps harder than they had anticipated were recurrent themes in respondents’ stories.

One described how:

I think a lot of people are disillusioned by just how hard being a manager is. Not just

physically, emotionally, mentally; but there is so much to take in, especially with (name of

organisation); they have a lot of policies and procedures of their own. And it does take a

while to get your head round it.

As rules and regulations in the EY sector have gradually increased; the feeling that there

were a plethora of policies to deal with was perhaps not unusual. However, some

respondents had worked in other nurseries and organisation and or, in two cases, the

Public sector and they too felt that the internal regulations of this particular organisation

were high.

Several individuals thought that many different skills needed to be developed as a

manager. One individual described how she felt that a nursery manager needed:

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…many-faceted skills really. You’re dealing with outside agencies, parents that are really

feeling guilt ridden that they’re out at work and their children are here. You’re a

counsellor, you’re dealing with staff and their problems. You’re an accountant, a secretary,

it’s just everything - and you just started off training to be a nursery nurse.

This emphasises the myriad of skills needed and the amount of training, potentially, that

needs to be in place to ensure that things get done and that the individual feels she knows

how to do them. As mentioned previously, management training appeared to have taken

place in this organisation primarily by means of being shown what to do by another

manager. Despite there being some provision of management training in this

organisation (in its infancy at the time of study), most individuals seemed to feel that the

best method of learning how to be a manager was to observe someone else doing it;

seventeen of our interviewees were deputies (four were acting managers) and were

learning the job that way. The disadvantage of this, some interviewees felt, was that they

had only being shown once as mentioned in the previous example of preparing budgets.

The lack of formal or on-going training was sometimes difficult in the sense of, as one

interviewee put it:

We went to college for two years to learn how to work with children. We’re then expected

to run a business with someone showing you once, which is quite a challenge.

As discussed previously, the case study organisation was perceived by most interviewees

to set very exacting standards and strict deadlines which had to be adhered to. One

individual described how she perceived them to have:

… fantastically high standards - and trying to get everything right can sometimes be a

struggle. You have to keep to the deadlines and some of the office procedures can be a bit

daunting.

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Another manager felt that:

That’s a big pressure we have got – to make a profit. We’d be in trouble if we made a loss.

I think a lot is expected of managers in this company. You are meant to be exceptional in

everything you do, they expect everything to click and if it doesn’t they come down really

heavy on you.

Senior management were felt to be generally supportive through, for example, visits to

the nurseries and an occasional letter of thanks for a job well done but, as one deputy

manager said:

You certainly know when you have done something wrong. They’re not too bad on the

whole usually but you have to keep your guard up and you can’t let the standards slip.

Another echoed this view:

They will often say we appreciate what you do but with all due respect to them they don’t

quite realise how much we do and how much is expected of you. There are high standards

and you are only human at the end of the day. So I think maybe it's a bit of ignorance on

their part, it’s not that they don’t want to support us but they don’t appreciate how difficult

the job is.

It seems clear that the senior management team did expect a lot from their nursery

management teams and probably did, in fact, appreciate the range of responsibilities that

they had. Informal management development often works well but the provision of

formal management induction and training programmes might act to both acknowledge

and to develop the range of competencies required by the role. ‘Keeping your guard up’,

feeling you need to be ‘exceptional’, finding it ‘daunting’; perceiving that they’ll come

down heavy on you’ puts enormous pressure on individuals trying to make sense of a

new role. Perhaps the speed of growth of the company and the relative newness of some

17

of the managers did not help but it could be suggested that the learning on the job

approach may not be sufficient in terms of coping with a management role. Another

pressure was felt to be the sheer responsibility of being in charge and, of course, in

addition to managerial responsibilities, there were multiple stakeholders to keep happy –

including the needs of the children. One interviewee described how:

The fact is that you have got fifty two children here and some of them are very tiny. That is

a big responsibility and sometimes keeps you awake at night.

In order to cope with regulations and develop the relationships with parents, social

services and so on, any management training in the EY sector will have to focus on the

external environment as well as the internal, nursery one. Indeed, the demands from

multiple stakeholders such as parents, OFSTED inspectors and so on were mentioned by

several interviewees as being a big responsibility and also how the expectations of

stakeholders were perceived to have changed. One manager, for example talked about the

raised expectations of parents these days:

What they used to be happy with 10 years ago, they’re not happy with now. Because of the

media and so on, their expectations are a lot higher.

The challenges of all this, of course, were not always described in negative terms. The

majority of interviewees said that they enjoyed the responsibilities of the job and

maintaining the high standards of the organisation. Some of their comments suggested

that they were surprised they could do it and had certainly not expected to have been

working in a managerial capacity when they started their career. Vincent & Braun (2010)

talk of the ’morally worthy nature of childcare’ and it is clear that, at any level including

that of manager, there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from working in the EY

sector. However, working with the children and working with their peers appeared to be a

18

major source of this intrinsic job satisfaction and, for many, moving into a management

role had meant losing this. This was a strong theme in the interviews, particularly for

deputies, who described how becoming a manager had meant, for many, ‘leaving’ the

group of girls with whom they had worked and now being seen as somewhat ‘apart’. One

individual described how:

It did take me a while. I was quite a sensitive soul when I first started - when I first became

assistant manager, because the girls had seen me as a nursery nurse and they didn’t really

treat me any differently. I would say ‘could you make sure you do X, Y and Z’ and they’d

just sort of look at me.

Another individual said that:

I had been here in this nursery from day one and the girls very much saw me as one of the

girls. The transition for them seeing me as doing a bit of everything to then being a

manager was difficult.

In this context, people management skills and the afore-mentioned relationships skills

become central again. What might also be of importance in terms of designing

management training is a preparatory stage where nursery employees get an insight into

what the management role is about – it might also help to alleviate any concerns they

might have about applying for such a role. Several individuals commented that their

colleagues appeared unable to appreciate how hard being a manager was. One

interviewee said:

I think a lot of them think we sit on little ivory towers and dabble away at the computer, I

don’t think they actually realise how difficult it is.

19

This is not unique to the EY sector and often the lot of the middle manager, a growing

area in the management literature (Fenton O’Creevy, 2001, Parker, 2004, for example)

and individuals who have moved ‘up’ often look to their new peer group for support

(Preston & Price, 2010). This also seemed to be the case with these EY managers who

described their main source of peer support as being from other managers at other

nurseries; indeed, this seemed to be an integral part of their informal development as

managers.

A Dual role

Keeping in contact with the children in the nursery was important to almost all the

individuals interviewed and most said they often worked extra hours not only to be able

to fulfil their responsibilities as the manager but also to be able to spend at least some

time doing what they enjoyed the most; being with the children. One individual summed

this up nicely when she said; “it’s quite a nice relief to be hugged and have someone

playing with your hair after trying to balance the books.” Another individual added to the

description of this tension between the two roles by saying:

I think that is the really fun part of it, planning and you know enjoying, watching the

children doing their activities and seeing them develop. Whereas sometimes I feel a bit as

if I’m number crunching and form filling and filing. I sometimes think this isn’t actually

what I was trained to do at college. So every now and then I have to ditch it, delegate, and

go back and plonk myself in a room for a morning or afternoon to get back in touch with

the reality.

20

Maintaining this dual role was largely felt to be difficult by most respondents. One

explained how:

One minute you’re in a room changing a nappy and the next minute you’ve got to answer

the phone and talk to somebody about X, Y and Z. Or if you’ve in the middle of doing an

activity and the phone will go and it’s somebody from head office and you’ve got to go

with talking to a child to talking about your financial situation. I’m always thinking about 3

or 4 different things at once, always, continually.

Most of our interviewees were surprised to find themselves in a management role in that

they had not planned to do this when they began working in the EY sector. This dilemma

concerning a dual professional identity – in this case, that of nursery nurse and nursery

manager (see McGillvray 2008) warrants further research in an EY sector and continues

to be an emerging area of literature in management studies generally (see, for example,

Ashforth and Mael 1989, Hogg and Terry 2000 and Humpreys and Brown 2002). Sluss

and Ashforth suggest that “roles are a central anchor for the social construction of self”

and that the “social construction of identities tend to crystallize around roles”(2007:12).

The loss of contact with the client and one’s former colleagues and peers is a theme

found in many other accounts of professionals becoming managers in other sectors (in the

Health Service, see, for example, Preston & Loan-Clarke, 2000; in Higher Education, see,

for example, Preston & Price, 2010) and appears to be an repercussion of being a middle

manager generally (Fenton-O’Creevy 2001, Thomas and Linstead 2002).

Conclusions and Discussion

The EY sector continues to be in a period of major change, receiving the kind of

governmental and public attention reminiscent of the health and education sectors in

21

recent years. Despite the introduction of professional qualifications, it could be suggested

that the image of a career working with very young children continues to be gendered and

relatively low status; something that everyone (woman) could do. Increasing demand for

child care by working parents, governmental agendas and the need to monitor standards

of care in a rapidly growing sector has emphasised the need for professional training and

development including that at a managerial level. Individuals who work in the EY sector

have found themselves being asked to take on management roles which are demanding

and complex, requiring skills that are not always supported by formal training or

adequate preparation induction and development within the role.

The case study outlined here has described the experiences and the perceptions of a group

of relatively new managers in an English EY organisation. This initial data seems to

suggest that they often found it difficult to deal with the work load and responsibilities it

involved, were often prepared to work extra hours to maintain their contact with the

children and had found it difficult to leave their peers. More positively, interviewees also

felt that they were making a contribution to the organisation and enjoyed having the

opportunity to develop themselves and others. They were challenged and generally

surprised at what they had achieved and were doing (being a manager). This perhaps

aligns with Goodliff’s (2007) finding that EYPS candidates report an increase in self-

esteem on achieving the qualification, despite expressing anxieties about the status and

long-term future of the role. With the right preparation and support, perhaps more

individuals could be helped into, and through, management positions in the sector.

22

An acknowledged limitation of this study is its generalisability. There is a need to explore

different sectors of child care provision, not least those nurseries in the public sector and

individuals running their own small nurseries. Many of these interviewees were

relatively young and had not been in a management position very long; the peer support

from other nursery managers helped and, in this particular organisation, a management

training scheme was being piloted. A further period of study in the case study

organisation now might reveal new insights into how the young women were now

handling the management role and how the demands and required skills had progressed.

In amongst the anxieties, were many positive aspects of being a nursery manager were

described by these young women, not least how they had surprised themselves. Perhaps

these benefits should be built upon in the design of management training for the EY

sector.

What has been highlighted here is how the pressure and responsibility of being in that

role might deter new recruits or might hamper the career development of those who have

stepped up to do the role. These points noted, it is proposed that this paper offers an

important insight into the experiences of young female professionals (nursery nurses)

taking on management roles in an extremely complex context. It adds to the wider

literature about professionals becoming managers, being a middle manager and the

tensions of performing and maintaining a dual identity within the workplace. Some of

these initial findings appear to reflect those found in earlier studies of new managers in

other sectors such as health care and education. It also offers insight into the practicalities

of management training within an EY context; that is, issues relating to the problem of

23

introducing rational systems and concepts into a complex, people centred environment.

Several comments from interviewees here suggested that their peers did not perhaps

appreciate, or aspire to move into, a management position; in this respect understanding

more about that experience and feeding this into the induction and development systems

for nursery managers is likely to continue to be an important issue for the profession in

the near future. Within the various international EY frameworks and qualifications to

prepare and equip child care practitioners into the future, this exploration of being a

manager in the nursery sector should begin an important debate.

(5470 words, excluding Abstract)

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